Moreton’s A Level taster day, which took place earlier this month, saw 25 girls choosing to experience Maths and Further Maths as one of their taster lessons, whilst nearly 40 attended the Psychology taster lesson. Moreton, which has a strong tradition of preparing students for Medical and Veterinary careers, knows just how important it is that girls are represented in these STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects.
Historically, women have been underrepresented in STEM subjects for many years. Their absence from the industry, university and school course only further highlights the disparity between men and women and recent HESA data has shown that only 31% of core STEM students in higher education are women or non-binary.
Across the globe there is also a noticeable lack of representation of women in STEM subjects. In Australia, female scientists were found to be almost entirely absent from Australian high school curriculums, whilst in Britain some pupils can’t ever recall being taught about women in science.
Mrs Lang, Senior Tutor and Registrar for Moreton Sixth, said: “As an all-girls school from 13 +, it was great to see our commitment to STEM reflected in the numbers opting to experience subjects such as Maths, Further Maths, Science and Psychology.”
During a recent ‘Moreton Discussions’ live streamed event, Principal Michael Brewer, further highlighted this importance. He mentioned how statistically girls do better academically in all girls’ schools, and this is particularly evident in traditionally male-dominated STEM subjects.
Mr Brewer spoke about how girls at all girls’ schools are 2.6 times more likely to take Further Maths A Level, and that they are also more than twice as likely to take Computer Science and Physics. In Biology, there is a 40% uptake on the national average, and that jumps to 85% in Chemistry and 88% in Maths.
Mr Brewer continued, saying: “It isn’t just participation rates that are up either, with girls at girls’ schools being the most academically successful students at GCSE. At A Level, girls at girls’ schools achieve more than twice the number of A* grades than the national average, and take home 20% more of the A*- C grades.”
Moreton Sixth is incredibly unique in that option blocks aren’t restrictive. Instead a combination of subjects can be considered, with Academic Head, Mrs Champion, meticulously building the A Level timetables around students’ diverse choices. The A Level taster day was therefore timetabled to be reflective of individuals choices, providing a mixture of STEM, Humanities, Modern Foreign Languages as well as creative subjects. This, in turn, reflects the much more flexible and diverse requirements from many of the top, and most competitive, universities.
Moreton Hall are incredibly proud of their students for actively engaging with STEM subjects and believe that the A Level taster day was a great success and showed that actually women do belong in STEM.